Congratulations to cast and crew and everyone who helped with the production of The Verge. The theatre program at CCBC is “not afraid of taking on the challenging” as noted by President Kurtinitis in her Tweet (https://twitter.com/DrK_CCBC/status/1055192096599089153). This show exposed the audience to a world that existed in the past and is still prevalent in our world today.
The cast of characters presented situations that the audience easily related to, from needing salt with eggs to differences of opinion for what the room temperature should be, to measuring up to others expectations. Personalities included the dedicated Anthony who is played by Broadus Nesbitt III. Even with the age difference, Broadus says he identifies with his character, they both focus on getting the job done and won’t let anyone stand in the way. He also admires the fact that Anthony is loyal to his cause, he doesn’t let anyone disrupt his work place.
Stepping behind the scenes and into the dressing room, James Fasching, Costume Designer, provides direction to the cast members. His job begins with production meetings and continues with meeting the director where he gets inspiration for each production. James says these conversations include details about the show, discussing things like the psychology of color, black = bad, white = honest, pink = youth, lavender = older. Choosing the right color helps the audience know the character. His collection of costumes has grown over the 36 years he has been the resident costume designer for CCBC. His job is to make everyone happy, and advises the academic cast, “the director has the last word.”
Director, Cohen Ambrose chose to be involved in this production because he “thinks one of the most important actions theatre artists can take is to produce forgotten or underproduced plays by women and minority playwrights.The Verge is a play that, old as it is, has only been produced a handful of times and, though it’s a somewhat unwieldy and challenging play to translate from page to stage, I believed it deserved to be given its due. Aside from representation, I thought the play’s central themes were deeply relevant, and as we progressed through rehearsals and the #metoo movement and the Brett Kavanaugh hearings continued and developed, the play only became more germane to the times in which we live. Susan Glaspell is a forgotten voice in American theatre and I believed she deserved our attention.”
Cohen says the most challenging element of this show was the language and style. Finding a way to lift everything, the acting, scenery, music, lighting and costumes, into a world that existed somewhere above recognizable reality. The Shakespearean language “with which the characters express themselves is poetic and infused with multi-layered rhetorical turns that demanded our constant and detailed attention both in order to know what was being said and also to ensure we nailed the comedy and the message on its head. The language itself, not unlike Shakespeare or the work of other poetically and rhetorically playful playwrights, lifts the style of the play into a place slightly above reality and demands that the actor reach toward emotional and intellectual extremes: tasks not beyond, but certainly challenging for young actors and for me.”
Cohen hopes “people now know who Susan Glaspell was and that she wrote plays, novels, and short stories that spoke and continue to speak to our experience as humans. I also hope that anyone who feels like they haven’t been seen or heard or who feel like they don’t fit into the boxes society carves out for us feels like their experience isn’t isolated. I hope women who feel pressured to behave like “women” have had at least a part of their experience validated. I hope men saw themselves in Tom, Dick, and Harry, and that each of us notices more often when we stifle, correct, and steer the women in our lives (particularly those we love) in directions that we want them to go.”
